Twitter Amplifies Obama’s Muted Iran Policy
Twitter got an interesting tech support call from a highly unique customer today: The Obama Administration, via the U.S. State department, which reportedly asked the microblogging service to delay a system upgrade in order to maintain the tsunami of history-making tweets about and emanating from Iran via Twitter’s #iranelection topic in the wake of the country’s highly disputed presidential election. It’s unclear if high-ranking members of President Obama’s team were directly involved in this Twitter request; given that this is by far the country’s most Web 2.0-centric Administration, however, it’s possible they were. (Last April, the State Department included Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in a sponsored delegation of technology executives to neighboring Iraq, in order to show, among other applications, a spokesman explained, how “new technologies can be used to build local capacity, foster greater transparency and accountability, build upon anti-corruption efforts.”)
In any case, it’s fascinating to contrast this behind-the-scenes activity with the official statements coming from the White House. President Obama’s first public statement on the Iran turmoil yesterday was muted and highly cautious, taking pains (in light of historic U.S. interference in Iran) to emphasize that his Adminstration respects Iranian sovereignty and self-rule. (Critics have instead urged him to condemn Iran’s repressive tactics.) At the same time, however, his State Department is actively working with the central conduit of protest against Iran’s government: Twitter. As the President put it yesterday, “[W]e do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.”
Web 2.0 gives birth to Politics 2.0
Here is a great post on the evolution of Politics 2.0 By Drew Clark
When it comes to adapting information technology, Washington is always about two years behind the rest of the country. So it makes sense that, finally, Web 2.0 is catching hold and gathering momentum here, in early 2007.
Washington’s political operative and consulting class has been energized by the early start to the 2008 election. And no one is ignoring the Web this campaign cycle. Call it Politics 2.0, and watch how it changes the media power balance when it comes to political discourse.
Consider YouTube’s YouChoose ’08, which last month launched its online channels for presidential candidates – and has 13 of them in a fortnight. Yahoo’s presidential election site is attempting to build community around Flickr photo-shoots of candidates on the stump. MySpace is likely to start a presidential space of its own.
Sure, every major candidate has paid lip service to glories of the Internet since 1996. Bill Clinton invoked the “information super-highway” and connecting classrooms to the Internet. Bob Dole clumsily mangled his campaign’s Web address during a presidential debate.
That was all window-dressing. Their teams – and their successors’ teams’ in 2000 and 2004 – mostly hired a few geeks to play politics on computers. The real campaigning went on in the broadcast television networks and in the pages of The New York Times and Washington Post.
That’s about to change. There is an energy about electoral politics and the Internet that is different this time around. Almost all of it has to do with maturation of software and social networking models that could upset the pre-ordained dance between candidates, media and voters. Already, we’ve seen John Edwards make YouTube a big part of his campaign, with others close behind.
To put it in other words, can Web 2.0 in 2008 truly displace the “MSM” as the premier medium of political discourse? Can the blogosphere bring down the mass-market media stage?
It could. Or at least it might. So says Joe Trippi, former campaign manager to Howard Dean. Sure, Dean lost. But Chuck DeFeo, who was eCampaign Manager for Bush-Cheney ’04, agrees completely with Trippi’s analysis. Now he’s trying to harness conservative backlashers – the people who do “not believe that Dan Rather was reflecting” their views – to congregate at Salem Communications’ Townhall.com.
Trippi and DeFeo were only two of the geek-politicos that gathered last week for Politics Online, the annual conference of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. Optimism about the Politics 2.0 was high.
Even NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen, who predicted that candidates would use Web 2.0 technologies as a “symbolic gesture” but “keep things exactly the same,” was bullish on blogs and wikis. They would do for citizen journalism what his previous calling – promoting “public journalism” in an (unsuccessful) effort to get the press to focus on election issues, and not the horse race – could never do.
Also represented at the conference were the creators of innovative sites like TechPresident and PresVid.com, or “the YouTube Campaign.” Online strategies herald new voter engagement that will “make politicians more accountable, creating a virtuous circle where elected officials who are… less top-down are rewarded with greater voter trust and support,” wrote TechPresident creators Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry.
But if Politics 2.0 benefits smart politicians and engaged voters, who loses from this new turn of affairs? The mainstream media!
Indeed, the most entertaining part of Politics Online came from a panel that pitted bloggers versus MSM: Rosen and Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com and PresVid against Jim Brady, executive editor of the washingtonpost.com, and David Plotz, deputy editor of Slate (now owned by the Washington Post).
Plotz said that Web traffic shows that horse race is what readers want – and don’t “want to eat their vegetables.”
“Journalists are convinced that no one wants ‘issues’ stories,” countered Rosen. “I don’t think that is going to change. The wild card is all the people excluded by the earlier process and all the things they can bring.”
If there’s a king-maker in Politics 2.0, it won’t be the likes of The New York Times or the CBS evening news.
By there may still be an opening. Consider an off-handed comment at the conference by Eliott Schrage, vice president of global communications for Google: “We have reached out to all the candidates and invited them to come to Google, to talk technology and policy, and maybe even grab lunch. And we are going to put those videos up if we can, and if the candidates permit us, on our web sites as well.”
Is it possible that the most consequential media pilgrimage a candidate makes in the 2008 election will be to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, rather than to the mid-town Manhattan news rooms of The Times or the CBS Evening News?
Politics 2.0 – The Obama Campaign
Here is a good post from Pep-Net on Obama’s Social Media Campaign…
Barack Obama’s electoral campaign represents a masterpiece in online-campaigning. The use of ICTs and the creation of an Obama-brand were the key features to mobilising the masses. Obama’s opponent, senator McCain, couldn’t motivate as many people to participate in his campaign.
Barack Obama was registered on more than a dozen different social media, the main ones (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter) included, and succeeded in forming an online community that strongly supported his goals. The online-headquarter was my.barackobama.com (MyBO) “[which] was at the heart of the campaign’s new media strategy. [… The] site allowed users to create events, exchange information, raise funds, and connect with voters in their area. MyBO was the digital home from which the campaign could mobilise its army of supporters.” [2] This portal helped creating a community with more than two million profiles. Of course, the easy-to-use website also attracted adversaries, which made community managers essential to evaluate and delete certain statements if necessary.
Citizens participate in Obama’s Campaign
The operators of MyBO established a strong sense of community as everyone with political interest could participate. In blogs, people could express themselves and report about their personal experiences during the campaign. Useful information, such as phone lists and guides for campaigning, were distributed via this internet-portal; even fund-raising-statistics of all members were included. However, the “real spirit of the community could be seen in the more than 200,000 offline events organized through MyBO.” [2]
The Obama campaign collected 13 million email addresses and sent one billion emails to mobilize its supporters. “The Obama team used email as an integral platform to engage supporters, bloggers, and online media. Often overlooked by traditional communications departments, email has one major advantage: speed.” [2] Putting email recipients into groups gave the campaign the opportunity to send individually designed messages to specific groups of people. An even faster way to communicate is SMS, which can be used to contact people without internet access, especially in rural areas.
Citizens make President independent
Obama’s blog was the centre where all news and information were displayed. “It was the hub that captured all activities in the Obamaverse and shared them with the world. The blog was the campaign’s repository, a place where stories, videos, news, and pictures were captured and pushed out to Obama’s many social network profiles.” [2] As people could participate, the campaign’s theme “Yes we can!” was emphasised. One of the Obama’s campaign stated goals was to involve people and to make them participate.
The fund-raising was well organised, and, instead of a few companies making large donations, many citizens donated small amounts of money. “3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.” [4] Even though Harfoush states different sums, one thing is for sure: Obama’s success in fund raising is based on small donations by many people. As a result, Obama’s campaign was neither dependent on financially strong lobbies nor on his party. The campaign’s activities in the Web 2.0 made Obama become a one-man-party. “Without entirely realizing it, America elected its first Independent president.” [3]
The campaign was successful because it was both consistent and authentic in all the different media used. Despite the campaign’s uniform appearance, campaign managers created a specific concept for each online-platform. Citizens could participate in the campaign; feedback was wanted, appreciated and heard. In summary, many volunteers supported and influenced Obama’s campaign and consequently led to the historic election outcome.
Sources
- Rahaf Harfoush. “Yes we did, strategic Insights from the Obama Campaign by Rahaf Harfoush.” scribd.com, 2008.
- Rahaf Harfoush. Yes We Did. An inside Look at how Social Media built the Obama Brand. New Riders: Berkeley, 2009.
- John Heilemann. “The New Politics. Barack Obama, Party of One.” New York Magazine, 01/11/2009.
Jose Antonio Varga. “Obama Raised Half a Billion Online.” Washington Post, 11/20/2008.
Politics 2.0’s beach reading list
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By ANDREW RASIEJ & MICAH L. SIFRY | 7/24/08 5:11 AM EST
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We’ve been writing this column for only a year, but lo and behold, it’s time again for our annual summer reading special. Since the temptation is to unplug, we thought this was as good a time as any to share some of our favorite carbon-based information tools (i.e., books) that you might want to take with you to the beach or the countryside. Here, our favorite poli-tech books of the past year:
If you have time for only one book, our top recommendation goes to Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.” At the Personal Democracy Forum, Shirky jokingly told the audience that his book could be summarized as, “Group organizing just got a lot easier. … And I just saved you $25.” That’s true, but if you want a stunning and easy-to-read guide to how the Internet is fostering a societal change as big as those spurred by the invention of the printing press and movable type, “Here Comes Everybody” is for you. Shirky has a sharp eye for examples, and his discussion of how new group-forming behavior is becoming a mass phenomenon will change how you think about the future of politics.
The next book we would add to your pile is Jonathan Zittrain’s “The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It.” If Shirky’s main focus is how the Net is fostering a creative explosion of self-organization, Zittrain’s goal is to warn that this very openness could also be the Net’s undoing. Thanks to the inclusive nature of personal computers that will run any software you load onto them, and to open protocols for Web development, we’re living in a golden age of what Zittrain calls “generativity.” But we can’t take it for granted, as spam, malware and other malevolent entitites online are pushing people toward shiny, closed appliances such as the iPhone; the owners of the Net’s pipes, the telcos, want to start discriminating among content online and end the practice of Net neutrality. Whatever your political leaning, if you’re a tech-politico, Zittrain’s book makes for sober reading.
There has been a bumper crop of recent books on the more prosaic side of Net politics, starting last year with Matt Bai’s “The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics” and Garrett Graff’s “The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web and the Race for the White House.” Both books hold up pretty well in terms of analyzing the broad contours of the forces affecting the 2008 presidential contest, even though they were written well before Barack Obama’s insurgent, Internet-powered campaign took off.
If you’re interested in the sociological side of politics, Morley Winograd and Michael Hais predict a generational tidal wave for Obama in November. Their book, “Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics,” makes a cogent case that we are on the cusp of a “civic generation” and that this demographic and cultural tide will favor progressive Democrats who offer a new way of solving society’s problems. One of those young activists, Michael Connery, makes the same case in his compelling call to arms, “Youth to Power: How Today’s Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow’s Progressive Majority.” Maybe, but perhaps John McCain’s lifetime of public service will resonate with these voters, as well. (But that book has yet to be written.)
If your taste in political reading is more down in the trenches, where campaigns are actually fought and won, two books are worth your attention. The first, “Mousepads, Shoe Leather and Hope: Lessons From the Howard Dean Campaign for the Future of Internet Politics,” was edited by Zephyr Teachout and Thomas Streeter, two veterans of that seminal 2004 effort. It features first-person essays from nearly all of the key players on the Dean campaign, and it is a must for anyone who wants to understand the nuts and bolts of merging a classic long-shot bid with the heady madness of the nation’s first Internet-powered presidential candidacy.
The second is called “Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics,” by Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox. Drawing on their own experiences in 2004 (with Dean and the Draft Wesley Clark movement) and the 2006 rise of Jim Webb, the authors update the story told by Teachout et al. Its core is a firsthand description of the Virginia Senate race, where Feld was Webb’s director of online fundraising, but the authors use that microcosm to make larger arguments about how politics is being upended by a combination of grass-roots activism and do-it-yourself technology.
Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t suggest our own book, “Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age,” which we edited with our colleagues Allison Fine and Joshua Levy. We asked contributors: What if our country’s Founders had all of today’s technology and tools for communication? How would they change the ways things work? The resulting ideas, from people such as Newt Gingrich, Craig Newmark, Glenn Reynolds, Joe Trippi, Jeff Jarvis, Esther Dyson and Beth Noveck, will surprise you. You can download the book free as a PDF at rebooting.personaldemocracy.com or join in the conversation about the essays by adding a comment.
Or you can take it to the beach, where it will make a very nice pillow.
Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry are, respectively, the founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, an online magazine and annual conference on how technology is changing politics.
Lessig Launches Change Congress: Political Reform a la Creative Commons and Wikipedia
Here is a post from Andy Carvin on Politics 2.0….
Today at the National Press Club, Professor Lawrence Lessig launched the Change Congress project. Created in conjunction with Joe Trippi, the project intends to employ the strengths of the Internet to end the impact of PACs and lobbyists on congressional policymaking. What’s really fascinating about this initiative is that he’s taking the lessons learned from creating the Creative Commons copyright initiative and applying it to political reform in a way that’s never been done before.
In his speech, Lessig gave several examples of policy changes that should have taken place but didn’t because of the influence of money, such as combating global warming or limiting the recommended allotment of sugar in our diets. These are policies that should have been no-brainers, but industry influence upended the process. He noted that when the country’s forefathers talked about independence, it wasn’t just about independence from Britain, but independence from improper influence as well. In that sense, he argued, their goal of achieving independence has failed.
But Lessig thinks it’s still possible to remove this dependence between Congress and money once and for all. The Change Congress project will take a three-step approach to the issue.
First, he wants members of Congress and the public to go online and pledge their support for up to four different goals: no longer accepting money from lobbyists and PACs; banning earmarks; supporting public financing of campaigns; and achieving total transparency of how Congress works. Users will be able to do this in the same way you select a Creative Commons license for your website. Their website will have a form that lets you select which ones you support, and it’ll generate a code you can put on your own site. This code will contain metadata driven by the semantic Web – essentially, a collection of URLs, each defining which of the policy goals you support. (update, 4:20pm: when I wrote this paragraph, the site’s badge generator wasn’t up and running yet, but now that it is, it seems that the code generated for users doesn’t contain Semantic Web metadata yet. Update 4:37pm: I’m now told that Semantic Web metadata might be rolled into the badges very soon, possibly later this evening or tomorrow; a volunteer is working on the code and hopes they’ll use it. -ac)
Embedding this code into your website, whether you’re a policymaker, a candidate or a member of the public, will let them reach step number two: tracking who supports what. In the same way that search engines can pick up websites that employ different Creative Commons licenses, Change Congress will be able to pick up which sites support each of the four policy goals. They’ll then be able to map out where support is strongest and where it’s weakest. Then, they’ll deploy crowdsourcing, just like on Wikipedia, to get an army of volunteers delving into the details to see who’s just pledged support and who’s actually supporting the cause in measurable ways. This information, too, will be mapped for all to see and scrutinize.
Step number three will be to employ these tools for raising money. The public will be able to make small donations – even just five or 10 dollars – to candidates that share the same policy reform beliefs as they do. This will allow for grassroots fundraising to take place, not unlike Emily’s List or the Obama campaign. Taken all together, he describes his project as a “Silicon Valley approach” to policy reform.
Lessig admitted there will be naysayers, particularly those who feel there are other problems more important that reforming Congress and the flow of money. To them, he gave the example of the alcoholic. An alcoholic faces many problems – loss of family, employment, health, etc – but none of them can be solved until the underlying problem – dependence on alcohol – is addressed first. To Lessig, before we can solve all the major policy issues of our day, we must first eliminate Congress’ dependence on money and outside influence. Once this can be done, the real work of implementing important policy solutions can take place. Harnessing the power of the Web and its seemingly endless community of concerned citizens, he may just be on to something here.
New White House Blog Published First Post
Great post on Politics 2.0 by Bill Ives
I have written about the Obama campaign a number of times see for example, Update from the Obama Answer Center – Web 2.0 and US Elections. I wrote in this post, “that it will be great if the US government adopts these practices to better connect with citizens. Perhaps lessons learned during the campaign on such issues as effective web practices to increase citizen engagement can be adopted by the government. There is great potential here. I think it is demonstrates some of the ways the new web can be used to increase engagement and the innovation evidenced by this campaign.”
I was pleased to see that the first blog post, Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov, went up on the new White blog even before the official oath of office and there is a Director of New Media for the White House, Macon Phillips who wrote the post. He said that the initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:
“Communication — This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates…
Transparency — The President’s executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning…
Participation — Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that…” There is a link to a form for providing input.
Macon said that they would put up the video and the full text of President Obama’s Inaugural Address. I look forward to hearing more. Blogs have come a long way since 2004. I hope that this is the case for our government in both parties as some of the principles of the new web of transparency and participation appear to be adopted by the new administration. See Rob Patterson’s post for more, Post-inauguration thoughts about social media. He said, “The Obama administration is going to do for social media what Teddy Roosevelt did for the Press and FDR did for radio but more so.” It will be interesting to see what happens.
Post-inauguration thoughts about social media
Here is Rob Paterson’s thoughts on social media and politics – post inauguration…
First of all – WOW!!!!!
Here in point form are some thoughts about what I think has also happened in the social media context:
- Twitter was huge and held together – was this not Twitter’s Performance Waterloo? – I found it a wonderful adjunct to my TV and my web watching. I limited my stream to those people that I knew and cared for and it was as if I was there side by side with them. This amplified the whole experience. Some were on the ground in Washington – their collective Tweets were like a composite eye – in aggregate they gave me a sense of being there.
So – if you wish to add more “experience” to your event and hence make it more “sticky” having a Twitter stream will do that.
If you claim to be a new organization and you do not use Twitter thoughtfully – then you are no longer in the game
- Streaming – I was joined by millions who wanted to make their computer the centre of their experience. I wanted this because I could add more layers to what was going on. I cannot do this with TV where all I can do is shift channels. I could use Twitter – I could have several streams open at the same time – I could chat – the list goes on. I think that this also was the Tipping Point for TV delivery – this is what the Tsunami was for blogging. This was the event that shifted the web as a delivery platform from being nice to being the most important. Of course it did not work as well as it was hoped. But the flaws in execution and in load management does not change the new reality. The Web is where TV will be seen. CNN’s excellent partnership with Facebook was a ramp up of this idea. I found it such fun to have the feed AND my peeps online on the same page. I started to think of BSG and a Twitter/Facebook combo. Not just news but more importantly to be able to watch whatever I wanted with my friends – a concert, a theatrical show, a documentary, a lecture content shared with friends is better than content watched alone. TV Web Stream PLUS my friends looks like a killer combination
So if you produce content for TV and you have not made up your mind that the web will be your primary arena you are no longer in the game.
Adding conversation with friends and enabling filtering of this group is the icing on the web TV cake
- Making this easy is very important. On the one hand we have the CBC who use a very tricky stream delivery and who clearly want to pull you back to the TV offering – on the other hand we have CNN and Facebook – their set up was exceptionally well done. Now the stream overloaded but that is solvable. CNN also offered multiple views – there was not only one stream but 3. I was struck by that. I can see down the road the value of offering many many views – I then become the editor of my own view of the event. Now I have control. What a shift in power! One of the views that is worth having is the C – Span view by that I mean one without any commentary – with my peeps we can do that too.
So – It is clear to me that CNN have crossed the Rubicon – they have senior folks who no longer see the web as good or interesting but as the primary way forward
- There is a new Media company out there. The White House is going to become a media powerhouse of its own. The Obama administration is going to do for social media what Teddy Roosevelt did for the Press and FDR did for radio but more so. The Roosevelts gave the new media worlds of their time a boost. But the press/media organizations were still always outside the Whitehouse. As the President showed us in the campaign, he is a master of being the media organization of the future – the White House will have massive conversations directly with the people – an not just the people of the US but with the people of the world. The 44th President is a master of the Cluetrain. Politics are all about Biological Markets.
So, just as he will show up all other elected leaders by his agenda so I think he will show up all others in mastery of how to use social media to do the great work of our time – how to engage people so that they no longer sit passively waiting to be saved but that they are brought into the conversation that encourages them to take responsibility for their own lives and their own communities.
This for me is my biggest aha – that our own conversation will soon move away from “cool” from the “Tech” to what this is all about. It is surely all about an awakening from the deep sleep, the passivity, the numbness, the dumbness – of the traditional mass media.
This where where responsibility replaces passivity. This is the great change and revolution of our time. The social use of media will wake us up and connect us to our real work.
Russian President Launches YouTube Channel
Barack Obama has it, Nicolas Sarkozy has it, Pope Benedict XVI has it, and now Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has one: his very own YouTube channel.
The channel is located over at www.youtube.com/kremlin, and its main purpose is to reach out to youth. Medvedev covers a wide array of topics: the first video on the site addresses schoolchildren and talks about good neighborly ties, while in the latest Medvedev talks about the Second World War and its outcome.
Interestingly enough, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does not yet have his YouTube (
) channel, although he makes up for it by regularly appearing on Russian television.
Social Media Meets Politics: Are Politicians Embracing Twitter for All the Wrong Reasons?
The conclusion of our three part series of articles written by Jackson West of SF Appeal Online Newspaper. See parts one and two.
What few of these eager and ambitious men and women angling for higher office or their coteries of public and private aides have acknowledged are the real and current, or potential and future problems arising from new social media tools: ethical improprieties, interest conflicts and propaganda abuses are obvious consequences in theory and practice. Social networks and Web publishing make monitoring the majority’s public sentiment and mollifying it with a mouthful of rhetoric easier and more politically expedient than ever. “My job, and the job of all good journalists I think, is to put that message in context,” the Chronicle’s Audrey Cooper remarked when asked about statements and press releases issued by public officials.
Almost anybody who’s posted a significant quantity of text, photos or video online for an extended period of time has regretted at least one public revelation, and might have even deleted the embarrassing item from the public record (or at least used a Web site’s privacy tools to restrict access). Even then, deletions and access restrictions aren’t reliable, as search engines and other Web sites may keep copies which may remain publicly available, and motivated snoops can find ways around privacy barriers.
Elected officials are the very definition of public figures who’ve chosen to sacrifice their right to privacy. Obliged to serve the public openly and honestly, though constantly encountering opportunities for corruption through personal ambition and political gain, their choices between keeping private secrets or telling public truths (and lies) pits their individual interests against those of their constituents.
Shortly after the Cosco Busan freighter sprang a leak, spilling toxic fuel into San Francisco Bay, Mayor Newsom left on a planned vacation to Hawaii, assuring residents that he was in constant contact with local officials dealing with the environmental catastrophe. Yet after returning from his trip, Newsom refused to provide details of messages he sent or received while away — citing the use of a personal iPhone as reason enough deny access to records of any communication between himself and other public servants.
Presumably, the mayor updates his Twitter account from the same iPhone, or better yet, a newer model. But by using a personal device, he can not only avoid public disclosure statues by “co-mingles” both public and private business — also avoiding laws against using publicly funded facilities for political ends like soliciting donations and campaign support.
By the same logic, using privately owned Web sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, politicians can also ignore record keeping and public disclosure statutes while indulging in public business or personal promotion as they see fit. It allows the mayor to add “favorites” from his MayorGavinNewsom account to appear as thumbnails on his NewsomforCalifornia account, co-mingling purported city business with promotional efforts such as his campaign kickoff ad.
“The strategy of what they’re doing is have as little as possible go on their Web site,” explained online political strategy consultant Bob Brigham. Brigham is another Twitter user who was blocked from by Newsom’s account. “It was petty,” he said of the snub. Yet he defended the mayor’s use of the account for both personal publicity and public engagement.
“Some people would tell you there’s sketchy ethical issues, but I don’t believe [that to be the case],” he explained. For folks who ask simple, concise questions about city services, he felt the mayor was within his rights to answer as a sort of 311 operator by proxy. “Even though it is his personal account, with the way the world works, I think it makes sense if somebody asks ‘How do I get rid of my mattress?’ for him to point out large item disposal.” As an example, Brigham lauded California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen as “The best person in California politics of electeds on Twitter.”
Bowen’s Twitter stream is certainly personal, and the tone is certainly a familiar one for typical Twitter users. The updates on meeting schedules posted to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors account, with its strictly business mien, is tragically unendearing by comparison. But with Newsom, Brown and Villaraigosa, while it’s clear that the Twitter and Facebook updates serve their personal interest (namely, to woo voters in the hopes of getting elected), it’s not so clear that they are publishing updates themselves.
It’s not uncommon for celebrities and other busy people to hire someone as a ghost writer to manage their online media presence. Both Newsom and Villaraigosa occasionally make spelling or grammatical errors, which would be unlikely if written by an underling anxious about making a mistake. Yet Brown has help managing his LinkedIn account, some of Villaraigosa’s updates are signed DL by an aide named Daniel, and early updates on Newsom’s Twitter account were written in the third person.
The latter were probably handled by Deputy Communications Director Brian Purchia, who’s widely credited with maintaining Newsom’s Facebook profile and though working for the mayor’s office, describes himself as working in the “Online Media industry” on LinkedIn. And he probably has help in the form of interns who were solicited on Newsom’s Facebook profile. If not Purchia, certainly one of the nearly dozen staffers on the city payroll who work in the mayor’s office of communications are tracking activity and likely helping to keep all of Newsom’s accounts current.
So to some degree tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are being used to directly address voter questions and concerns, and also offer a little insight into the lives of our elected officials. But policies on disclosure and accreditation vary widely, and while it’s one way to reach a certain segment of constituents, many more are left out. And whatever public value it offers for conducting public business has generally proven minimal compared to the personal value for politicians chasing publicity, donor contributions and votes on election day.
Social Media Meets Politics: Technology Proves an Enabler for Ambitious Politicians
This is Part 2 in a three part series of articles written by Jackson West of SF Appeal Online Newspaper. See part one here.
If Twitter isn’t necessarily a chance to engage directly with critics instead of issuing statements through the press, then what is it for? Newsom argued in a Geek Entertainment Television interview that “for people who want to offer honest criticism or counsel and advice, it’s very meaningful.”
Even activists like Jeremy Pollock with the League of Young Voters rely on online tools. For Pollock, Facebook has become “my default place for keeping tabs on political events and fundraisers,” even though the organization still focuses on providing printed voter guides and more traditional peer to peer political engagement.
And from a campaign standpoint, social media also offers significant opportunities for fund raising. The perceived authenticity of communication over social networks means that unlike traditional online advertising, “click throughs” for social media appeals and recommendations are much higher. And unlike buying ads on search engines like Google, not to mention television, newspaper, billboard or even bumper sticker ads, there is no direct cost.
More importantly, unlike offline advertising methods, online methods make it much easier for individuals to go from inspiration to donation. There are no checks to fill out or envelopes to stamp, briefcases full of cash to smuggle or hookers and blow to surreptitiously deliver — while outsider candidates using Paypal to collect contributions have run afoul of local election officials when public financing is sought, privately financed campaigns can use sites like ActBlue to offer the same transaction ease. And subscription donations, like those that netted the Barack Obama campaign so much cash, mean that over the course of a long election supporters on a budget can offer small contributions over time — which can amount to significant money by election day.
The benefit of this is that candidates don’t necessarily have to rely on large institutional donors, at least in theory. But congressional candidate Adriel Hampton only managed to turn 10 of his 2,800 Twitter followers into donors with an appeal shortly after announcing his candidacy. “Unless you really tap into Marko Moulitsas favorites, fundraising is still a phone call operation,” Hampton concluded from the experience.
Newsom has done better, netting a total of $566,995 through ActBlue. A fundraising drive featuring a barrage of Twitter and Facebook status updates on April 31st netted a new record of 282 donations in a single day. Altogether, appeals broadcast online via email, Facebook and Twitter with a link to the Gavin Newsom for Governor account on ActBlue grossed a total of $361,619.74 by the end of April.
With 1,382 donors, that amounts to an average donation of $262.37. But with 338,605 followers on Twitter and 46,955 supporters on Facebook, ActBlue can only claim a conversion rate of 0.3 percent so far — which doesn’t include any “viral” distribution, such as followers and supporters copying, pasting and otherwise relaying a donation appeal link on their own profiles and pages.
Meanwhile, a single day campaign event in Sacramento cost $100,000. And it wasn’t paid for by small donors, but by more traditional sources including AT&T, PG&E, unions and a lobbyists, if filtered through the state chapter of the College Democrats. In the last California gubernatorial election, over $130 million dollars was spent among all the candidates. The half million dollars raised online so far would amount to only one percent of $50 million dollars, which is the kind of money a Democratic primary nominee is likely to raise and spend in order to fight an independently wealthy Republican challenger like billionaire businesswoman Meg Whitman.
And Whitman’s not exactly a technophobe — she previously served as CEO of eBay.
The six-figure Sacramento party was aimed at young people, and for good reason. Newsom has made a point of contrasting his comparative youth against former governor and likely primary opponent, Attorney General Jerry Brown. Yet, while still the mayor of Oakland, it was Brown who was the first to blog — long before Newsom’s missives were featured on Daily Kos or the Huffington Post. Meanwhile, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has yet to formally throw his hat into the gubernatorial race, has already lobbed a cutting salvo over the bows of both the Newsom and Brown campaigns by declaring that as mayor of LA, he “is not going to Twitter while Rome burns.”
In his recent reelection campaign, Villaraigosa may have deduced that Twitter and Facebook are a great way to reach out to some voters, but not all voters — and certainly not key demographics in a statewide election. Speaking from his own experience organizing local constituents through the League of Young Voters, Jeremy Pollock noted that “the San Francisco Twitter culture seems a little older than the Facebook crowd and more of a techie type crowd than the political crowd.” (It should be noted that the Twitter account which the League of Young Voters maintains was another of those known to be blocked by the Newsom account).
Pollock pointed to a study by San Francisco’s YouthVote [PDF] that revealed Asian-American and “white” (caucasian) students at San Francisco schools were the most likely to use Facebook, while black and latino students were much more likely to use MySpace. Newsom and Villaraigosa both have MySpace profiles, though Newsom’s official Web site doesn’t link to it and neither candidates’ campaigns have updated their MySpace profiles since last year’s national and statewide elections (as of this writing, Newsom’s last login was April 21, three weeks ago). Brown has no obvious MySpace presence at all.
MySpace is owned by News Corp., which hasn’t exactly been friendly to the Democratic party machine. Newsom even caught flack over Twitter from his own cousin after a televised appearance on another News Corp. property, Fox News. But the lack of MySpace engagement signifies campaigns giving up on reaching out to marginal constituents. The choice of Twitter and Facebook over MySpace betrays any stated intent at radical inclusion, since choosing sides in the digital divide belies the crass algebra of class prejudice in online electioneering.
A certain class of constituents with the time to keep themselves interested and informed can now reach out to and interact with each other and their elected representatives as nominal peers, even anonymously (if careful). This surely opens up new avenues of both advocacy and dissent. “It does democratize information so that it’s not filtered by an editor of a newspaper,” said Newsom of Twitter and other online services in his GETV interview.
Does that mean statements presented directly by public officials online are more valuable to the public than excerpts, quotes and paraphrased details as part of a newspaper article or television report? Certainly, they’re invaluable as source documents for citizens, other officials, researchers and historians. But what of the emails, text messages and other private communications between government officials which aren’t published online — will Twitter and Facebook help “democratize” that information as well?
In the next and final installment, we’ll take a look at some of the ethical issues that arise and best practices that have been proposed for public servants who’ve turned to private Web sites and services for communication.
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